Swedish Meatballs Go with Everything

I have discovered something, Swedish meatballs are a versatile food item. You can add them to almost any dish and the dish will turn from good to fabulous. I am very lucky to be living in Sweden where you can buy pre-made meatballs at any store. And they are really good.
Okay, I guess that I don’t eat them everyday, that would be gross but I do really like them. It was a bit of a running joke about what I would be eating when I got here. The truth is that I make three meals a day for myself here, so I eat pretty much the same things that I ate in America. My Swedish is getting better everyday, and many of the items have similar names, and common sense helps too. I have had a few bumps in the grocery store road when choosing certain food items. For instance, they have mjolk (milk, see, not that hard) and filmjolk. Filmjolk is some sort of sour milk (?) that the Swedes put on their cereal. Luckily I bought the right kind. Contrary to popular belief I have not as of yet eaten any herring, though I did consider buying it yesterday. I do eat a lot of salmon and lox, it is quite nice here. We don’t have very many restaurants here in Orrefors, and it is very expensive to eat out, so my cooking abilities have improved ten fold. We do, however, have a pizza/kabob shop right by my apartment. Being from Chicago I am pretty much obligated to say that the pizza here sucks, and it is pretty awful, but I still go there about once a week just to do something with my friends. It’s still good hang-over food, and it’s all we have.
There are other things about being in a foreign country that throw you through a loop when you least expect it. Sometimes I feel like a child again, not knowing how to do basic things. Like when it took me 20 minutes in the airport to figure out how to use the payphone. Or when I did my laundry for the first time. It didn’t even cross my mind that the machines would be different. They have about 1000 different settings that you can wash on, all explained in Swedish, and not easy to translate. It was embarrassing because I had to ask one of the high school students to explain the washer and dryer to me. I don’t have very many things here and I couldn’t risk ruining all my clothes, so I had to suck up my pride and admit that I couldn’t figure it out myself. They have been really kind and patient with me which is nice. Especially with the language. Everyone is helping me learn, even though my pronunciation is helpless at times, but always getting better. The other day my teacher Stip-Allan was giving me change from the coffee machine. As he put it in my hand I counted out loud, in Swedish. He was so proud and kept telling everyone. I am like a two year old again, people get excited when I count to ten.